A Bookseller Recommends...

The Secret Painter

Joe Tucker

"My favourite book of the year. The Secret Painter tells the story of the author’s uncle, Eric Tucker, who lived an ordinary working class life until eventually confessing that he’d produced over 500 magnificent works of art over his lifetime.

Tucker paints a beautiful portrait of the man he knew and of the one he didn’t. He attempts to understand his uncle’s motivations, fears, and passions, and in doing so explores why humans create art in the first place. I saw a lot of my own family in it; it’s a book I’ll never forget." ~ Emily, Edinburgh

A Bookseller Recommends...

Question 7

Richard Flanagan

“This book spins and spirals through time: to the early 20th century, when HG Well’s love affair with a young writer Rebecca West and a kiss they shared in front of a bookcase becomes a novel that, in turn, becomes the inspiration for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima that, in turn, frees Flanagan’s father from a Japanese POV war camp.

Such is the order of things - the inverted nature of cause and effect - that Flanagan magics up: a world where fiction comes before reality. This is an extraordinary piece of writing - and I've noticed everyone who has read it seems to share the same mesmerised recognition of its brilliance." ~ Saskia, York

A Bookseller Recommends...

Cold Kitchen

Caroline Eden

“To read Caroline Eden is to be transported. Her Black Sea and Red Sand cookbook series have long been favourites of mine and many of my fellow booksellers.

Cold Kitchen is “a year of culinary journeys;” an incredible montage of her travels from the trans-Siberian railway to witnessing a coup in Kyrgyzstan to Lviv just before Russia’s invasion, and onwards.

The book intersperses her stories with simple, brilliant recipes - Börek, Hoşaf, Russian Railway Pies - that collapse the distance between here & elsewhere, home and away. It’s a glorious, funny, moving book that feels like travelling with the best companion imaginable.” ~ Saskia, York